Sony: VR market growth “below expectation”

A few years ago, as Facebook forked out $2bn for Oculus and Valve and Sony entered the fray with fancy tech of their own, virtual reality looked like it might have become the next big thing not just in video game land, but in entertainment. Fast forward to 2018, and things haven’t grown quite as fast as some of the major players had hoped.

One of those major players is Sony, which released the PlayStation VR headset in October 2016. As of December 2017, PSVR had sold two million units.

Yesterday, during an investor relations event, Sony said that while the PSVR specifically was growing, growth for the overall VR market was “below expectation”. The line came in a note under the “challenges and improvements” section of a presentation on Sony’s video game business, called the game and network services segment.

Clearly, Sony reckons VR has failed to take off in the way it had expected. But it’s not alone.

Earlier this month, Oculus VR’s Matt Conte told Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz the size of the VR market in 2018 is smaller than it had hoped. :: Call of Duty YouTuber uses maths to work out the size of the Black Ops 4 battle royale map “Some people find it weird that we tell them to ship on all platforms. We don’t want exclusivity. Read more from eurogamer.net…